Elites don't control as much as we think

Updated 2:17 am, Sunday, June 17, 2012

In a recent column I wrote that human societies, however organized, are directed by elites, whether in politics, war, commerce, technology or witchcraft. I did not mean to imply that the elites in question always know what the hell they're doing. Should I mention our current financial-political complex, which somehow replaced the military-industrial?

It's discouraging to study the beliefs and practices of our former elites over the course of human history. Most socio-political systems have been based on great lies: god-kings, then kings anointed by God, social orders ordained by Heaven, or in democracies, that the people actually rule. Divinely designed social systems die hard; Dei Gratia still exists in some current Christian royal titles. (The Israelites had problems with anointed monarchs because their judges and prophets labored under the same misapprehension about themselves.) Then, after democratic revolutions established the belief that governments are made by men, a hundred fantasies bloomed. Nazism and Marxism are classic examples of ideologies invented to justify would-be political elites. And some liberal intelligentsia can't balance the concepts of liberty and equality, or accept that some cultures are best extinct.

Any elite that succumbs to or puts ideology over evidence has ceased to think and has lost its right to lead.

But let's give the political class a break — the medical profession wallowed in invincible ignorance for millennia. The best doctors bled patients to remove their humors and inflicted indescribable tortures in rich patients such as the 18th-century German prince who was induced to swallow a crucifix. (Sometimes the clerical elites colluded in health care.) In 1800 most doctors were better Latinists than physicians, and many resisted the notion of sanitation until the 1890s. Only the fusion of the art of medicine with experimental science created medics' current high standing — but if you watch the alarums on TV, you wonder if they still get it right.

As for historic military elites, the history of battle is one of continual confusion and stupidity, and the number of really superb tactical and strategic leaders can be counted upon two hands. Most wars are won by sheer attrition, not military genius.

Because America lacked a juridical upper class, our legal profession might have filled this role. However, lawyers and judges argue over whether what is, is, or what is, is not, leading to a vast loss of public respect. The media elite has the same problem, because it wants to be players instead of cool-headed purveyors of the news.

I could go through other elites, but you get the picture.

However, all this is not to put them down. Elites are the product of instinctual human organization. I simply want to point out that our species, even the brightest and the best, is not as intelligent, or as much in control of nature and ourselves, as we like to think. It was this way in the past, and I think it's this way now. Understanding of past folly may make us feel superior to our ancestors who didn't know what we have painfully learned. It should also make us wonder: What ignorance are we wallowing in today?